Delivering a drug to the target site with minimal-to-no off-target cytotoxicity is the major determinant for the success of disease therapy. While the therapeutic efficacy and cytotoxicity of the drug play the main roles, the use of a suitable drug delivery system (DDS) is important to protect the drug along the administration route and release it at the desired target site. Polysaccharides have been extensively studied as a biomaterial for DDS development due to their high biocompatibility. More usefully, polysaccharides can be crosslinked with various molecules such as micro/nanoparticles and hydrogels to form a modified DDS. According to IUPAC, hydrogel is defined as the structure and processing of sols, gels, networks and inorganic–organic hybrids. This 3D network which often consists of a hydrophilic polymer can drastically improve the physical and chemical properties of DDS to increase the biodegradability and bioavailability of the carrier drugs. The advancement of nanotechnology also allows the construction of hydrogel DDS with enhanced functionalities such as stimuli-responsiveness, target specificity, sustained drug release, and therapeutic efficacy. This review provides a current update on the use of hydrogel DDS derived from polysaccharide-based materials in delivering various therapeutic molecules and drugs. We also highlighted the factors that affect the efficacy of these DDS and the current challenges of developing them for clinical use.
Currently, scientists are on the cutting edge of inventing many novel biomaterials from various sources for selection in tissue engineering and controlled drug delivery systems to improvise the patient surgical and treatment processes. This article focuses on the significant improvements made in the design of natural, biodegradable polymer‐based biomaterials and their applications in biomedical and tissue engineering areas. Polysaccharide and protein‐based hydrogels are suitable for soft and hard biomaterials. The soft biomaterial is made of biodegradable natural or synthetic or in a combination of both polymers that can be utilized for a stipulated time and cleared partly or whole of the system that it treats, enhance the rate of healing or replace tissues or organs. Soft biomaterials fabricated for muscle, ligament, tendon, articular cartilage tissue engineering exhibit valuable properties, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, flexible, renewability, and cheaper. The combination of the polysaccharides and proteins with synthetic biodegradable polymers improved the mechanical strength and when added with inorganic calcium compounds could be exploited in hard tissue engineering, such as bone tissue engineering. The development of biomaterial for scaffolding in tissue engineering using polysaccharides and proteins could lead to the emergence of a new era of safer material to replace the damaged tissues in the body without suffering inflammation. Polysaccharides and proteins are consumed as food, and treating damaged tissue with food‐based biomaterial would not harm the humankind. In the near future, the development of natural polymer‐based biodegradable biomaterials by interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research scientists is highly important.
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